


Heartstone

by Jasper (CatsAndHounds)



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 16:39:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5633710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatsAndHounds/pseuds/Jasper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every child knows what makes a story. There is a beginning, a middle, and a end. </p><p>There will be a hero, brave and true. There will be loyal companions. There will be a villain. </p><p>There is magic. </p><p>These are the things every child knows: blood calls to blood; debts have to be repaid; a wizard never lies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartstone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bonnie (CatsAndHounds)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatsAndHounds/gifts).



It starts with a scream.

Sylvie, all of six years old and four feet tall, screams back at the pool of water. She flails, feet edging closer to the edge of the pond. 

Mother pulls her back by the arm. She leans down and whispers into Sylvie’s ear, “That, darling, is one of the scariest things you’ll ever see.”

“Promise?” Sylvie asks, shaking. She summons a flame, its tendrils in the shape of a flower, just to remind herself she can.

“Trust me, I’m magic.” Mother smiles. She kisses Sylvie’s temple. “A wizard never lies, and especially not to those she loves.”

“And every wizard knows how she’ll die,” Sylvie finishes quietly. It’s just a saying, but not really, it isn’t, not when she looked into the water and saw… that.

The fire flickers for half a second. It dies, leaving nothing but wind to blow away the ashes.

-

It starts with a scream.

Jo is eight, and she sees a shadow move and shift and fly away. The shadowless man is old and toothless, but she sees his eyes flash red. 

She screams. 

Her mother shushes her and says, "Don't stare. It's not polite. You're better than this." 

-

It ends like this:

“He’s dead, Jo,” Sylvie says, her face pale. She stumbles, leaning her weight on a tree. “I don’t know how they did it, but he’s gone.”

 _He's_ been part of her life for long enough. It never ends. 

Jo's seen his shades for years before she had a reason to believe that anyone cared. Sylvie always knew, but he was the family bogey, the story about what happens to reckless wizards. 

_You'll lose your heartstone that way,_ Mother says, when Sylvie faints after a fast and furious display of flames. _You have to know your limits._

Immortal demons can't die. After all that, all the disasters he's sown, he's not a demon. A man can be killed, even one who seeks to become a demon. 

Even one who stole years from Sylvie, and in the worst way: he took potential, not time or memory. 

Of course she's rattled. A part of her wants to mourn an era, and another part of Sylvie returns hollow, bereft of the connection that's been both blessing and curse. 

“Are you sure?” Jo asks, glancing over her shoulder. Nothing jumps out from the brush, which is good. Otherwise, they’d be dead. They pick their way through the tangled mess and glowing moss. “He might be faking. It wouldn’t be the first time.” 

Sylvie grits her teeth. “Positive. Trust me, I’m magic.”

Jo snorts, but she can’t hide her crooked smile or the crinkle of her eyes. “Rho and George and Der all try that. I don’t believe them.”

“You believe me, though,” Sylvie wheedles. “I’m your favorite wizard.”

“Well, maybe you’d be if you knew a transportation spell.” Jo only scoffs at her fishing for compliments. 

It’s not like Sylvie saved her life or anything.

She moves to protest, but she stumbles again. Sylvie coughs up blood. Gold splatters on the ground. Her blunt nails scrabble through her shirt, and she swears.

“Syls—“ Jo starts, scrambling over to the wizard as fast as she can. She nearly trips over a root. “What’s happening?”

How many times has she asked that, in their time together?

(‘What’s happening,’ Jo breathed in awe, bright and blue-eyed, as the fae lights danced above them. A beautiful moment, until the sprites descended with their vicious teeth.

‘What’s happening!’ Jo panted, as they ran from angry fire serpents. ‘I thought you said dragons weren’t real!’

‘What’s happening,’ Jo asked in confusion when Sylvie opened her inherited magic scrolls, soft golden light diffusing into the room. ‘That can’t be real.’)

What’s happening, she asks now. Sylvie’s never wanted to lie to her because but—  
Jo doesn’t need to know. She tries.

Sylvie can’t. Her mouth won’t form the words, and it’s hard to breathe as it is. Sylvie’s air gasps, and she stops trying to say, ‘It’s nothing. I think I bruised a rib.’

“Heartstone poisoning,” Sylvie gasps after a torturous few moments of silence. Her chest burns and burns and burns, and every movement she makes turns the burning into a delivery of pain. It hurts. She digs and finds iron in her boot.

The secespita in her hand looks like more than an iron knife, and the handle looks like more than plain ivory. The golden ring sparkles, hauntingly familiar. It almost doesn't hurt for a second, not with the way that light ripples on the golden surface, calling Sylvie back to—

When? 

“You do it.” Sylvie doesn’t look at Jo, transfixed on the knife. She extends her arm, a desperate silent plea for Jo to take it. Jo does.

“Cut it out. Right over where your heart would be,” she says, like Jo hasn’t been looking there as soon as she said ‘heartstone.’

“Sylvie.” Jo turns the knife in her hands. “You don’t want me to—"

“I’m fucking weak, Jo!” Sylvie yells though she wants to scream and wail. Her fingers feel stiff, and she can almost feel the warmth of a flame. Try as she might, nothing comes to her, no spark, no light, no burning ember. “I can’t fight it. Cut it out. I’m not going to be anyone’s puppet.”

Mortal history records towers of imprisoned good wizards, maidens with flaxen hair and a charming smile, easily biddable and proper hostesses to knights and princes. In the stories, a good wizard exiles herself to save the rest of the land from destruction. In the stories, a good wizard never strays from advising a hero and divining his future. In the stories, a good wizard is always coy and naive. 

The stories make Sylvie retch. 

A wizard's only truly vulnerable spot is her heartstone, and to target it is to target who a wizard is. Everyone knows that a wizard dies with her heartstone, but only the truly cruel and vindictive know how to taint one, to turn a wizard's heartstone against her. It takes a betrayal. 

They've seen it happen. 

Rowan sat at _his_ elaborate table and called him "Brother," with no sign of recognition in her eyes at all. Not when Jo begged her to remember their childhood, not when Rho told her of their flesh and blood, not even when Der offered her his vows. They hoped that love could overcome. 

Instead, Rowan challenged Sylvie to a duel: magic against magic—will against will. Even a shell of Rowan couldn't help from being competitive. _He_ merely laughed, belittling them yet again, telling them that his _dear sister_ could take care of them. 

It must have happened then. Sylvie hoped that Rowan would know her magic and remember, but giving her access was a mistake. 

Just like how Rowan thought he could be redeemed. He wormed his way into her heartstone and blocked the flow of magic, planting his own kernel of corrosive malice. 

For a wizard, will compounded by magic is reality. A tainted heartstone ties back to the poisoner's will, insinuating itself to the very fiber of the target. As the native magic finds a new path through the heartstone, it fights the intrusion, but the wizard almost never wins.

Sylvie isn't strong enough to win that fight. Rowan was stronger than she could ever be, and if she lost, what hope did Sylvie have?

“It’ll kill you!” Jo snaps, her voice echoing in the woods. Then, softer, “You can’t ask me to do this.”

“There’s no one else I would.”

The iron is cold against her skin.

Sylvie screams, and somehow, it’s worse for the knowing. _It’s now,_ she realizes, _it’s now, and I never told Jo—_

Sylvie can’t think. She screams. The blade is angry red and magic hot, and she feels a pull.

-

It starts with a scream.

Jo thinks she’ll hear it on her deathbed.

“You’re still my wizard,” Jo whispers, supporting as much of Sylvie’s limp weight as she can. Her unoccupied hand smooths down Sylvie’s dark hair. “You’ll always be.”

Sylvie doesn’t answer. Jo props her up against a tree and even then, she sits beside Sylvie. 

There’s nothing to do but wait.

She turns the knife in her hands.

Even now, magic still amazes Jo. She would have never guessed that Sylvie wasn’t naturally fairer than the sun—that every part of her didn’t shine as bright as her golden magic. Her hair, her eyes, even her blood—Jo looks down and sees the gold splatter and wonders, once upon a time, if wizards bled just as red as mere mortals did. 

The wound closed as Jo cut, dark gold and sickly grey. It tingled, and Jo can't believe that her hands are unscarred. Futilely, Jo checks Sylvie’s pulse. She feels nothing, still as it ever is.

Looking at it, the stone in Jo’s hand— _Sylvie’s heartstone. Her heart or the closest thing a wizard has_ —is too small. Small, pale gold, and warm. Smaller than the palm of Jo’s hand but so vital to a wizard.

“What do I do with this? Put it in a jar?” Jo says, to the suddenly cool air.

“It looks like an amulet to put on a necklace,” she muses. For all the talk about how precious heartstones are, for all that wars and nations have lived and fallen by them, they look like costume pieces. It’s enough to make Jo laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

She closes her hand around it. It’s still warm.

“Yet, it’s oddly pretty.”

A butterfly lands on Sylvie’s nose.

“That’d be sweet,” Sylvie answers, her breath ragged. Sylvie heaves before catching her breath for a moment. 

This time, she coughs up red. “If you hadn’t just cut me.”

“Sylvie!” How can Jo say anything else? Every time she thinks there are no more tricks, something else happens. "Wizards. Why do you always have to scare me?" 

“What wizard can’t do magic?” Sylvie murmurs, half-audible. “One without a heartstone.”

"Syls?" 

There's a lump in Jo's throat. Sylvie stirs, a twitch of the neck, a jerk of a limb. She doesn't answer. 

“At least you’re alive?”

“No.” Sylvie stares past Jo into the thick foliage above them. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m dead.”

“You’re still my favorite wizard, in any case. Undead or not,” says Jo, voice wobbling. She tries to keep herself from sobbing. 

What’s happening. What’s happening, she wonders. Sylvie says she’s dead.

This is the Sylvie who never explains anything to her. Sylvie, who is the most difficult wizard in the history of difficult wizards. Sylvie, her wizard. 

Her throat is dry.

She looks to the stone in her hand. “Do you want this back?”

Sylvie blinks and wrinkles her nose. Her eyes are honey, Jo realizes, not gold.

“I’m not a wizard anymore,” she frowns. “It’s my heartstone. You won it, fair and square. You can’t give it back. It’s yours anyway, no matter where I am.”


End file.
